Whales cannot see blue

[gingerdavid]

I was doing some reading on colour perception recently, and came across a fascinating paper¹ by a team of scientists who had examined the eyes of whales and seals

Comments

[amurderofcows]

When I was learning about science as a kid, I was so blown away to learn about the electromagnetic spectrum, and to realize that visible light was just a tiny sliver of wavelengths from 380 nm to 750 nm. And when I found out that some animals could see parts of the ultraviolet and infrared spectra, I felt cheated. Of course, considering that being able to see UV wavelengths is the reason bugs will fly willingly into a bug zapper, maybe I shouldn't have been quite so jealous.

I also remember being annoyed that my teacher didn't have an answer to my question about what lay at shorter wavelengths than gamma rays, and what lay at longer wavelengths than the long-waves. Like many elementary school teachers who [attempt to] teach science, she had an English degree.

[tko_ak]

You may be an astronomer and not a marine biologist, but doesn't the scientist in you want to hypothesize on potential evolutionary purposes of this?

[bdouville]

I love convergent evolution. We live in such an intriguing universe, don't we?